(The Hosting News) - Parallels, the hosting and cloud services enablement leader, today released the latest updates to Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™, its primary and proprietary research that profiles the buying behavior of small and medium businesses (SMBs) with regard to cloud services. Now entering its third year of annual publication, the research results continue to confirm that SMBs remain the fastest growing segment for cloud services and the optimal target market for service providers of all sizes, with the global market for SMB cloud services expanding at a 28 percent CAGR to $95 billion by 2015.

In addition to offering the complimentary research reports, this year Parallels is furthering its investment in industry knowledge by enhancing its interpretations and conclusions of the data by leveraging a Kano analysis and conjoint analysis to provide guidance for optimizing cloud bundles and pricing strategies. Preliminary results from these deeper analytic efforts are being previewed at Parallels Summit 2013, and in-depth reports will be released later this year.

Some of this year’s Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™ research findings include:

Storage is a strong upsell opportunity for Infrastructure-as-a-Service providers, and 50 percent of SMBs are willing to pay more for increased storage.

Website building tools are a key way to differentiate service providers’ offerings. Currently, 22 percent of U.S. SMBs are building and managing their websites with such tools, and 30 percent report they plan to adopt website building tools by 2015.

The latest research reports include worldwide market sizing, forecast and penetration rates of SMB cloud services, along with country-level breakouts for the United States, Brazil and Mexico. Findings are being shared first with the attendees of Parallels Summit 2013 in Las Vegas, an annual event that attracts a global audience comprised of hosting partners, independent software vendors, systems integrators, industry analysts and press from across the world.

“Parallels SMB Cloud Insights research is core to our commitment to help service providers make both strategic and tactical decisions about the rapidly growing market for SMB cloud services,” said Birger Steen, CEO of Parallels. “We are pleased with the responses we are receiving from our service provider partners and will continue making a substantial investment in our expertise and knowledge initiatives.”

Additional Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™ research findings include:

Globally, the 2012 cloud services market has grown to $45 billion USD as at least 6 million SMBs entered the cloud market for the first time last year. The global market will continue to grow at 28 percent CAGR through 2015 to a forecasted $95 billion USD.

In the United States, the SMB cloud market is now $18.9 billion USD and is forecast to grow at a 19 percent CAGR through 2015. This growth is driven by SaaS applications, which saw 60 percent growth in 2012. Additionally, 68 percent of SMBs indicated they would prefer to buy their cloud services as part of a discounted bundle.

In Brazil, Parallels predicts the SMB market will grow by 33 percent year-over-year for the next three years, reaching $2.6 billion USD by the end of 2015.

In Mexico, the SMB cloud services market grew 30 percent last year and will continue to grow at 45 percent over the next three years, making it one of the world’s fastest growing SMB markets.

Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™ reports outline the cloud services that have the most current and future appeal for SMBs across four key categories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Web Presence and Web Applications, Hosted Communication and Collaboration, and Business Applications (also known as Software-as-a-Service). The new Global, U.S., Brazil and Mexico reports mark the third year of ongoing research in the Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™ series, which now includes unique reports for 14 countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, China, India, Japan, Australia and Russia. Regional roll-ups are also available for Europe and Asia Pacific. All 32 SMB Cloud Insights™ reports are available for download at http://www.parallels.com/SMBreport and within the Parallels Service Provider PartnerNet Portal. The four new reports will be available online February 8, 2013.

In cases where service providers would like Parallels to take its research and insights deeper into their organizations, Parallels Cloud Acceleration Services provides a suite of professional services designed to define, build, launch and grow a service provider’s cloud business. The suite has been honed from hundreds of deployments of Parallels cloud enablement solutions. Parallels Cloud Acceleration Services deliver cloud product management and go-to-market consulting, giving service providers critical business thinking and analysis to help create a differentiated portfolio and customer experience.

About Parallels
Parallels is a worldwide leader in hosting and cloud service enablement and desktop virtualization. Founded in 1999, Parallels is a fast-growing company with more than 900 employees in North America, Europe, and Asia.

For more information, please visit www.parallels.com/spp, follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ParallelsCloud, and Like Us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ParallelsCloud.